


Live With Me Forever Now

by TheImpossiblePossibilities



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Gen, Movie Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 08:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2645165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheImpossiblePossibilities/pseuds/TheImpossiblePossibilities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hiro, you have to understand, Prof. Callaghan is still in there-"<br/>"I don't care," Hiro says. "You can't go in there."<br/>"Hiro, you have to let go!"<br/>In the time it takes for Tadashi to pry Hiro's fingers off his camouflage green jacket and make a run for it, the building explodes in a blast of fiery volcanic flame with the Microbots and Professor Callaghan still in it. </p>
<p>Or: Hiro's a lot more selfish than anyone gives him credit for.<br/>Tadashi isn't. Maybe that's why he was supposed to die. This time, he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sometimes the only payoff for having any faith

Hiro's a lot more selfish than anyone gives him credit for.

 

Hiro lunges for Tadashi's sleeve and grips it with all the fervor of a desperate fourteen-year-old determined not to lose his brother. His eyes are dark and pleading.

"Hiro, you have to understand, Prof. Callaghan is still in there-"

Tadashi isn't. Maybe that's why he was supposed to die. This time, he doesn't.

 

\--

"I don't care," Hiro says. " _You can't go in there_."

"Hiro, _you have to let go_!"

In the time it takes for Tadashi to pry Hiro's fingers off his camouflage green jacket and make a run for it, the building explodes in a blast of fiery volcanic flame with the Microbots and Professor Callaghan still in it. Both of them land on the brick surface of the pathway. The back of Tadashi's shirt jacket is burned to bits and Hiro bears the combined weight of him and his brother, his body landing with a loud thump on the unforgiving floor. His shoulders land first and the rest of his body follows.

He knocks his head so hard he blacks out, Tadashi's worried and guilty face above him.

 

\---

 

Hiro fails to remember much of his parents. Aunt Cass and Tadashi were the only family he ever knew.

He doesn't wish for more. He loves Aunt Cass and he loves Tadashi, and they have been nothing but good to him. He used to ask Tadashi about them, once. Talking about them wouldn't bring them back and Hiro hates the pained smile his brother used to give him when he asked.

He might not have many friends, but he has Tadashi and GoGo and Wasabi and Honey Lemon and lord help him, Fred. Without them, he'd never have gotten anywhere.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that.

 

\---

 

The hospital smells sharp and clean against Hiro's nose and his eyes flutter open to Tadashi bent over a chair, white bandages peeking out underneath a nondescript grey shirt. Aunt Cass is awake, her head hovering over her phone, furiously tapping away at her screen. He attempts to shift a little and yelps as the IV digs into his arm. Thankfully, that's the only needle hooked into him- the only thing is a heart rate monitor that makes a high A sound the moment he winces at the pain.

Aunt Cass looks up immediately. She sets her phone down and hurries over, shaking Tadashi gently, who was still asleep. Tadashi could sleep through the end of the world- more accurately, 97 decibels, without physically touching his person. Hiro had tested it once, on a particularly boring Sunday morning at 7am by using a pair of fine-tuned speakers hooked up to his computer strategically placed next to Tadashi's ear. Tadashi probably still hadn't forgiven him for that.

Thankfully, Tadashi wakes up quickly, presumably due to the uncomfortable nature of his position. Aunt Cass promptly begins to fuss over Hiro.

"The doctor says you had a concussion, you know. You still have a concussion. Not to mention bruised ribs! Tadashi," she says, shooting him a poisonous glare. "What were you even thinking, trying to go in there?"

Tadashi sighs, opening his mouth to respond to what seems to be an ongoing arugment. "Aunt Cass, you know I couldn't have just did nothing." He looks guilty, as if he could have helped the professor live somehow by going in the burning building and getting himself killed.

Aunt Cass rolls her eyes and chooses to ignore him in favor of looking over Hiro. "The doctor said you could go home tomorrow if everything turned out okay. This was just a precaution. As for him," Aunt Cass says, looking at Tadashi, "He has minor burns, so I'll consider that punishment enough for his stupidity." Despite her words, she gives both of them a soft smile before heading out the door, muttering something about hospital bills.

They both sit awkwardly in silence. They rarely have awkward silences, which only serves to make the occasion even more awkward than it has to be. Hiro looks at Tadashi, unsure of what to say. "I couldn't have let you go in there."

They share a conversation of glances and shrugs and raised eyebrows.

Tadashi nods. "Right." He pulls Hiro into a careful hug. Hiro revels in the warmth, and doesn't think of anything else.

 

\---

 

The altar only has one picture on it this time round.

There's one less grave in an overcrowded graveyard and Tadashi's heart is still beating.

 

\---

Professor Callaghan's funeral is somber. Scores of students fill the empty space surrounding the grave. Some of them are crying, some aren't, and some simply don't care.

Hiro frowns and feels guilty but he doesn't regret a thing. Later that night, he lies awake at three a.m. in the morning and pretends he didn't dream that he let go of his brother instead of holding on. Eventually, he turns over to his other side and falls back asleep to the sound of his brother's snores echoing around the room.

 

\---

 

Everything turned out okay.

 

\---

 

Hiro has unapologetically taken over Tadashi's lab for the afternoon. His brother is outside, helping Honey Lemon clean up the mess from her latest chemical reaction. Hiro, thankfully, was absent when it happened. The lab is filled with bright orange foam that sticks to everything, including human skin.

His one and only microbot from the other night was placed carefully in a glass box. A few weeks after class started, the microbot started acting up like it was trying to go somewhere- but it must've been a sensor malfunction, because all the microbots were destroyed in the fire. Hiro had tried everything- resetting the perimeters, changing the if loop requirements, even rebuilding the sensors themselves, but none of it was working.

Three very frustrated hours and a quick break to get food and laugh at Tadashi, Honey Lemon and  Wasabi still attempting to clean up the mess later, Hiro is ready to give up, irritation burning in his chest. He kicks his chair in retaliation. The chair bounces off the table, which knocks over a keepsakes from New York, which knocks over a metal box full of unused wires, which promptly falls on Hiro's sneaker-clad foot.

He yelps, dancing all over the room while clutching his foot. Damn, that box was heavy. Now he was going to have to clean up those wires (and please don't tell me the brand new microwire was brok-)

"Hello, I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion."

Hiro quickly lets go of his foot, overbalancing in the process and landing with a thump! on the floor of the lab. "Ow! Um... Hi, Baymax. Nice to see you."

"It appears that you have fallen."

"You think?"

Baymax hauls Hiro off the ground gently. The robot was unsurprisingly soft, and Hiro makes a note to ask Tadashi what kind of material he managed to make so comfortable yet durable.

"On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

"A zero? Look, really, I'm fine, I just dropped a box on my toe, that's all. And that fall wasn't a big deal," he says, rubbing his arms and frowning. Baymax seems to take this as an indicator of pain and begins to rub him on the head.

"It is alright to cry. Crying is a natural response to pain."

"No, really, I'm _fine_ ," Hiro says. "God, did Tadashi program you to be like himself or something?"

Baymax completely ignores him. "Scanning for potential injuri-"

"Don't scan me!"

"Scan complete."

"Un _believable_ ," he says, rolling his eyes.

"You have sustained long-lasting or health-threatening injuries. However, your hormone and neurotransmitter levels indicate that you are experiencing mood swings, common in adolescents. Diagnosis: puberty."

"What?!"

"At this moment, your hormone levels also indicate that you are currently frustrated. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, honestly, it's fine. I just have to figure out how to fix the malfunction in the Microbot- wait, Baymax," Hiro interrupts, reaching out to take the glass box from Baymax. However, the robot holds it out of his reach. "Hey!"

"I believe your contraption is attempting to go somewhere," Baymax says, matter-of-factly. "Will it make you feel better if I solve this problem?"

"Well, yes, but I don't think- HEY!"

\---

Tadashi looks up from the last of the gooey mess on the lab floor to see Hiro chasing after Baymax while yelling like a decapitated chicken. He sighs, takes the apron off and looks apologetically at Honey Lemon. She smiles and waves a hand at him. He dashes out the door and follows after his crazy brother into the busy streets of San Fransokyo.

 

\---

 

The building is old and dilapidated, the wood rotting and the other brick buildings around it in a similar state. They were in the less respectable parts of San Fransokyo and Hiro looks around nervously. It's bright daylight, and they are completely alone. Now that the anxiety of losing Baymax was no longer clouding his mind, he wonders how good of an idea it is. Still, his curiosity knows no bounds.

"Hiro, I don't think we should go in there," Tadashi frowns.

"If someone's, like, stealing my Microbots, I want to know," Hiro says. "Besides, would you rather go in with me or have me sneak out later tonight?"

"But you don't even know if there are actually Microbots in there."

"Tadashi, you know I've checked everything. I even rebuilt the location sensors. It's not it, I promise."

Tadashi sighs, knowing he's already lost this argument. Hiro smiles as reassuringly as possible- which is to say, not reassuring at all. "What's the worst that could go wrong?"

Tadashi gives him a fond, exasperated smile. "You had to go jinx it, didn't you?"

They sit in silence for a few seconds, contemplating how to open the lock on the door. Tadashi sighs (again). "Why don't we come back some other time?"

"Tadashi, I believe there is a open window approximately 3 meters to your right and 10 meters up," Baymax interrupts, extending a finger towards the window in question.

Hiro suppresses a laugh at Tadashi's absolutely poisonous glare. "See, even your robot wants to go in."

"I do not have wants, because I am a robot. I am merely giving you a solution to this problem that will best ensure your safety, so you do not return alone without Tadashi and risk further injury."

Hiro flaps a hand carelessly at Baymax in response, turning a megawatt grin on his brother, who is rubbing the bridge of his nose. Hiro knows Tadashi's mostly just doing it for show now- after all, he had to be the responsible big brother. The man looks up, looks at Hiro's face, looks up again, and sighs.

 

\---

 

Tadashi goes up first, having Baymax hold him up to the window and then hoisting himself up using his arms. Hiro stares in muscle envy.

Eventually, they all manage to get up to the second floor. Hiro is pulled up by Tadashi, which is a blow to his ego (he's short, jeez). Baymax gets stuck in the window, and Hiro and Tadashi look at each other, bewildered, as Baymax deflates by letting out a series of sounds that strongly resemble flatulence. After several seconds, they glance at each other and simultaneously start giggling.

Geniuses can still be immature, after all.

After several more moments, Baymax inflates back to normal size.  Tadashi mutters out, "Set volume to 4%." Baymax says something back but it's faint and barely discernible. Satisfied,  they tiptoe towards the only source of light in the old warehouse. The blue light emanating from the room and the little sunlight from the broken windows casts eerie shadows on the walls. Both of them share a unsure look; the whole thing sends chills racing up Hiro's spine. As it is, it only serves to make him more eager to discover what's going on.

Besides, even when Hiro was scared of the dark as a little kid, he always had his brother. There wasn't really any room to be scared of the monsters under your bed when your sibling is snoring like a bear right in your ear, after all.

The trio manage to make it to the room without (further) incident. Hiro peers inside first, but all he can glimpse is a conveyor belt leading out to the warehouse and two machines producing whatever's on the belt. He walks around the room to the other side. Whatever he was expecting... It was far from the truth.

 

There are millions and millions of Microbots, all separated into large black bins.

 

Hiro was right, as per usual. There wasn't anything wrong with the remaining Microbot.

 

\---

 

Hiro can only stare in astonishment as his brain races to process all of this new information.

The Microbots weren't destroyed in the fire, which meant someone took it, studied the technology, and managed to replicate it. But who could it be, and for what reason? He needs a hypothesis.

Something touches Hiro on the shoulder and he whirls around, startled.

"Oh, Christ. Don't do that," he says, socking Tadashi lightly on the arm. His brother, the ass, only ruffles his hair while smiling before his face goes slack in shock. He takes a hesitant step back. Hiro frowns, and turns back around slowly. The Microbots begin to rise out of the bin in sharp, jagged spikes, and above it rises a man in the worst trench coat Hiro's ever seen and a Kabuki mask.

"Oh, hell."

"Hiro!" Tadashi says disapprovingly. Hiro shoots him a dirty look. Honestly, Tadashi sometimes took the big brother thing a little too far- though Hiro wasn't going to complain if his big brother beat up the metaphorical bullies on the (also) metaphorical school playground, but there was that and there was this. Then again, he was lenient enough with the whole bot fighting thing, so.

"You really want to argue about this now?"

"You shouldn't curse-"

"Well, shit, looks like I did it again-"

"Aunt Cass will kill me-"

"Well Aunt Cass isn't here, plus you stubbed your toe yesterday and look at what came out of your mouth-"

"You weren't supposed to be in the lab-"

"Well, I was-"

"You shouldn't have been-"

"Maybe we should run-"

"We are so talking about this when we get home!"

They break off running in the opposite direction of the masked man. Hiro halts and runs back for Baymax. He tugs the robot along as they run towards the door.

"Run faster, Baymax!"

Baymax is still moving at the pace of a drunk snail on ice. "I am not programmed to be fast."

Hiro scowls at Tadashi. "Why the heck is Baymax so slow?" The Kabuki-mask man is gaining speed on them, and Hiro's black belt does no wonders for his ability to do anything faster than normal speed(he's great at punching stuff; running, not so much.)

"It's not my fault that you dragged us into this! Ze was supposed to be a care robot. Huggability isn't quite exactly synonymous for speed."

"To be fair, Baymax dragged me into this first- literally," Hiro says, protesting. They turn around a sharp corner- the entrance is in sight now. There just seems to be one problem-

"Isn't the entrance locked?" They screech to a halt on the concrete floor. The masked man is close enough to see each individual gleam of a Microbot. The door remains stubbornly locked no matter how sternly they both stare at it.

Tadashi gestures for Hiro and Baymax to move aside. He takes a few steps back and exhales before executing a perfect running-step-jumping side kick on the wooden door. He misses the center by a few inches. Instead of opening it by force, it punches a torso sized hole in it, which is nowhere big enough to fit Tadashi, Baymax, or even Hiro.

"Dammit!" Tadashi yells. They take off running again, turning around the door towards the staircase at the far end of the warehouse. Their footsteps clang loudly on the steps as they enter room after room. The Microbots are getting even closer now. Hiro prays to all the higher entities that both of them will live (and that his lungs won't collapse from all this running).

Much to their dismay, Tadashi finally reaches a dead end. Both of them look around for escape routes and simultaneously alight on a large vent big enough to fit all of them. Hiro dives in headfirst, Tadashi and Baymax close behind him. They clang their way noisily into the next room as the bots chase after them. By pure luck, they manage to pop of the vent right in front of the staircase. The two of them are panting heavily as they go up the stairs.

The Microbots reach them just as they all hurl themselves out of the window. Baymax traps them in his arms as they hit the ground. Thankfully, Tadashi's programming doesn't fail, and they manage to land at exactly the right angle and trajectory to roll back onto their feet with minimal injury (Hiro got stabbed in the stomach with Tadashi's elbow, but he's positive he ended up head butting his brother, so it's all fair.)

Both of them looks around, panicked, but nothing comes out to chase them. Hiro leans against Baymax and wipes cold sweat off of his forehead.

This was definitely worse than the time his kindergarten teacher made the class play freeze tag.

 

\---

 

"So you are saying Mr. Kabuki Man chased after you, your brother and Marshmallow man using robots controlled with ESP," the policeman said skeptically, his baritone voice flat and unamused.

Tadashi, fed up with Hiro's bang up job of explaining the incident, steps forward. "No, what my brother is trying to say is that an anonymous criminal assaulted two human beings and one robot with misappropriated technology. That technology also happens to be copyrighted as well." Baymax supports this statement with another noise (again) resembling flatulence. Ze peels a piece of tape of the tape dispenser, which proves futile, as six more holes in zir appear.

"Where were you at the time of this... attack?"

Hiro opens his mouth to fib, but Tadashi interrupts him again. He feels a very childish need to stick out his tongue where his brother can't see him, but refrains from doing so out of pure willpower. (He's a _genius_ , dammit.)

"We were visiting an abandoned warehouse clearly marked as public property. The robots here," he gestures to the Microbots in the glass box. "They track a certain kind of frequency, and that frequency was emitting from the warehouse. We didn't suspect anything was amiss, so we saw no need to warn anyone."

The policeman nods slowly, spinning around to reach for a clipboard. He attaches a CH-670 form onto the top. "Fill this out and we will..." He looks up. Hiro and Tadashi are long gone, and Baymax has pulled the tape dispenser all the way to the door.

 

\---

 

The sun is setting by now. The people leaving from work barely gives them a moment's glance despite the fact that there was a giant, huggable marshmallow robot standing next to them. Baymax beeps dejectedly. "Low battery."

"Oh, heck no-"

 

\---

 

It takes fifty minutes and a lot of complaining before they get Baymax back to the university, then across the campus of the university, up the four flights of stairs, down the absurdly long hallway, and back into Tadashi's lab, where he puts Baymax back in the bright red container and back home.

 

 


	2. is when it's tested again and again everyday

**Chapter 2**

Honestly, it's a miracle that Hiro even manages to make it to the doorway before the snoring abruptly stops. Tadashi groans and looks up, peering around to see the cause of his rude awakening. His eyes alight upon Hiro. He really should've just made a run for it the minute his brother woke.

Then again, Tadashi would probably see his empty bed, panic, and pull out his creepy stalker program (which is honestly the only probable explanation of how he knows where Hiro his at every given point in time, for god's sake) to track him down. Of course, he wasn't planning to go anywhere but the garage today. Tomorrow, however, was a different story. Hiro had a plan. A _plan._

His brother pokes his head out from the mass of pillows and blankets and stares at Hiro blearily. "Where... are you goin... g?"

Hiro takes another tiny step towards the closed doorway as subtly as possible. "Down... to... the... garage..." He prays his brother would be too sleepy to go downstairs. They've both had midnight science binges, usually together, of course, but sometimes one of them would be too tired to go anywhere.

Tadashi groans and flops back over onto his back. Before Hiro can do so much as make a run for it, his brother abruptly throws the blankets off the bed and turns around to face him. 

"What're you gonna do?" He questions, shuffling his feet into the stupid giant bunny slippers that Aunt Cass bought as a gag gift for Christmas last year. Tadashi looks absolutely ridiculous- his bedhead hair, usually hidden under a gray 49ers cap Hiro got for him for his birthday, along with his extremely outdated flannel reindeer bottoms give him the perfect confused hobo look.

Hiro briefly considers lying, but it would be entirely pointless. They have a habit of asking the other to look over their work for mistakes and there would be absolutely no chance of him making anything in secret if Tadashi would be looking over his shoulder the whole time. If he tried otherwise, Tadashi would become even more suspicious.

"I'm going to see if I can create a frequency jammer to cut off the transmission between the transmitter on Kabuki Man's head and the Microbots," Hiro finishes in a rush. He's still clinging on to the hope that his brother will roll his eyes and go back to bed if Hiro says it as fast and incomprehensibly as possible.

Tadashi sits up straighter, his eyes suddenly alert. "You want to  _go after him?_ "

Hiro can't really respond to that without incriminating himself, so he stays quiet. Tadashi continues to scrutinize him, which was really way too stressful for 3am in the morning. Finally, his brother gets up and stretches, popping his back.

"Well," he says. "I'm going to help. Promise me if that it fails, you'll come up with a better way to get your Microbots back instead, alright?"

Hiro nods.

  


\---

  


The rain is drizzling, the raindrops splattering loudly against the closed door of the garage. Both of them are reduced to quiet whispers so as not to wake Aunt Cass up. They are wearing identical flannel shirts with a matching case of extreme bedhead from their abrupt awakening at 2 a.m. on a Thursday morning.

"Look, maybe if we adjust the maximum frequency range-" Hiro says, pointing at a never ending line of code, filled with numbers and brackets.

"If-" Tadashi starts. "Even if we do that, every time Kabuki Man gives a new command via neurotransmitter, the frequency will get interrupted."

"That's true. What if we try to deactivate the neurotransmitter first?"

"You would have to get physically  _in between_ the Microbots and the transmitter anyway, we might as well just pluck it off his head," Tadashi grumbles from his position behind Hiro's shoulder. Hiro has an urge to smack him in the forehead with the keyboard in front of him.

"Well then...." he trails off, his tone mischievous, "We  _could_ just do that, right? Even though I programmed the Microbots to… well, not fall apart too easily, individually, they're all pretty weak."

"Hiro, those Microbots are made out of a mix of carbon and steel," Tadashi huffs. "You know as well as I do that never mind 'individually'," he says, complete with hand gesture air quotes, "it would be strong enough to crush our bones." 

Hiro opens his mouth to reply back, but closes his mouth as he decides trying to find a witty reply would probably involve both of them imagining the disgusting visual of their bodies being crushed by a swarm of tiny black Microbots.

"Also,"a thought seems to occur to Tadashi in that moment. "How are we going to find him anyway?

Hiro pauses. "Umm..." he scratches his head. "I was just going to do it the same way we did last time," he mutters. "Using the Microbot."

"Well, that's not a  _bad_ plan..." Tadashi says. "There should be something better than following your 'bot without knowing where we're going, which sounds like A Really Bad Idea," he infuses as much sarcasm into the words as possible, stretching out the last three words.

"Well, I don't know!" Hiro throws his hands up in the air. Honestly. "Do  _you_ have a better idea? Did you or Baymax manage to stick a GPS tracker on him while I wasn't looking?"

Silence echoes in the room as Hiro sits there expectantly, Tadashi’s face utterly blank of any indicators of what he’s thinking. Tadashi narrows his eyes contemplatively, and Hiro raises an eyebrow, still waiting.

"Wait, Baymax might, um," he says a bit too loud. Hiro doesn't have time to shush him before his brother is running into the house and up the stairs without further explanation. Hiro winces at the sound his footsteps make against the hardwood floors. Knowing their luck, Aunt Cass would wake up, and then god knows what would happen next.

  


\---

  


"What are you doing up so late? And on a  _school night?!_ " Aunt Cass yells, her hair falling out from her braid and sleep worn eyes.

It would be comical if it wasn't so terrifying. They'd only had to face an Aunt Cass with sleep deprivation once before, when the shop had hit hard financial times. Hiro never wanted to do it again. He blanches, thankful that he'd barely made it into the living room yet and ducked behind the doorway, hoping he wasn't seen. Tadashi could deal with it himself; it was his fault for being so _loud._

Tadashi blinks, his eyes wide and two feet planted on different steps of the stairs as he headed up to the bedroom. "Um..."

"Don't think I haven't noticed that you've done this before," she continues. "And you boys are old enough that it shouldn't matter," Aunt Cass takes a deep breath, presumably for patience. "But could you do it A LITTLE BIT QUIETER?"

"Um, right," Tadashi says slowly, his face still stuck in an expression of terror. "We're really sorry-"

"We're?!" Aunt Cass exclaims. She surveys the room quickly and somehow manages to spot Hiro despite her lack of x-ray vision. "Come out from behind that door!"

Hiro jumps out as fast as possible and makes a run for the stairs. "We're really sorry, Aunt Cass, we'll just go now and leave you to your beauty sleep, alright? Yeah? Yeah," he replies, pushing Tadashi up the stairs and shuts the door behind him.

They sit there for a few minutes feeling slightly shell-shocked. Tadashi breaks the silence first. "Well," he mutters. "I'll just talk to Baymax tomorrow morning, then."

Hiro nods mutely.

  


\---

 

Predictably enough, they sleep past the alarm. Hiro forgets to zip his fly up and Tadashi forgets to bring Baymax to the school, but they make it in time to their respective classes anyway. They mostly forget about Kabuki Man for the rest of the day, all the way up until their lunch break.  


\---

  


Today, the school served cheese-filled burritos with a side of crappy salad that no one ever touched. If you were willing to fork out another five dollars, you could gain access to the much better buffet- buffet being the operative word, as there were maybe four more dishes and two more desserts.  Hiro winced as the burrito wobbled on the tray with an expression more akin to jelly than actual food. There went his appetite.

The cafeteria is loud and crowded, filled to the brim with people. They all manage to squeeze into a 4 person table in the center of the room, and they remain in mostly silence for the first four minutes of their eating.

"Hey," she says. "Where'd you guys go yesterday?" She accompanies the last syllable with a bit of her burrito, somehow managing to not get cheese on her clothes.

Wasabi frowns and looks up as well. "You guys missed study group time, you know. You had the  _notes,"_ he complains, stabbing at the piece of steak he got from the buffet and nearly knocking Fred’s can of Pepsi off the table.

Tadashi points accusingly to Hiro. "It was all his fault, all right?"

"Hey, it wasn't my fault some crazy guy tried to steal my tech! Besides, there's still one and a half weeks till the test," Hiro defends, taking another messy bite of his food. Tadashi had a habit of pinning everything on him, in his rather fair opinion.

Honey Lemon looks up. "Hiro... You do know that Professor Davis is known for giving the hardest tests in the whole campus, right? Also..." she frowns. "What do you mean by crazy guy? Who stole your tech?"

"Someone stole your tech?" Fred pipes up. "Was it your Microbots? You've got to get it back! Whoever it was, he would be, like, a great villain, what with the 'I can control this awesome robots to make whatever shape I want' schtick."

"Fred, we aren't superheroes," Wasabi points out, exasperated. It wasn’t much of a change from his normal tone; he always sounded exasperated.

"Well.... Did you report it to the police?" Honey Lemon asks, ignoring the two.

"And how did he steal your Microbots anyway? Weren't they all destroyed in the fire?" Wasabi continues, Gogo nodding in agreement.

Tadashi and Hiro share glances. "We  _did,_  but Hiro dragged me away before I could-"

"They wouldn't do anything, anyway. We're just teenagers, so we're probably playing a  _prank,_ " Hiro says sarcastically, patting his brother on the head condescendingly. He ceases after an annoyed smack on his wrist.

"Well, you never know," Tadashi responds, putting up a token protest. "They might've listened..."

"Where would they find him, anyway? We don't have any proof, and it's not like they can find him or something."

"A man in a weird mask and a trench coat from a thrift store is probably quite conspicuous," Tadashi shoots back. "No one's going to go 'he seems like a perfectly normal guy, I'm just gonna leave him to his business."

Of course his brother had to pick this time to develop a sense of humor.

"No villain in their right mind would go out dressed like that," Hiro retaliates. "Unless he had Deadpool worthy scars, he could just, I don't know, wear normal clothes?"

Gogo cuts in. "We get it, you hate each other, it’s cool. But what are you actually planning to do about it?"

"You still haven't told us how he stole your Microbots yet or how they didn’t burn up," Fred complained. "Stop arguing already."

Hiro pauses. "We don't know  _how_ he stole them exactly... Or why. But I do want to find out... Considering he tried to attack us, it can't be anything good."

"I still think that maybe we shouldn't just confront him...? We could call the police when we find out where he is, or film him as evidence," Tadashi tries once more. He goes largely ignored by the rest of the group.

"We'll totally help," Honey Lemon volunteers. "I bet we can at least help you guys. Right?" she says, glancing around at the rest of the group. They all nod in agreement.

There's a slight silence as none of them know what to say.

"How are you going to find him, though?" Fred questions, breaking the quiet.

Tadashi blinks. "Actually..."

 

\---

 

“Hey, Aunt Cass,” Tadashi greets, before running through the back door of the shop. The rest of them take their time, pulling out seats from the table by the window.  

“Nice to see you too, Tadashi,” Aunt Cass huffs to the half-open door. She seemed to have forgotten the… altercation from earlier that morning.

She turns around and flashes all of them a bright smile. “So,” she says, grabbing a plate of chessboard colored cookies from behind the counter, placing it on their table with a clatter. She grabs one and takes a bite. “What’f up wif him hoday?” Hiro doesn’t have time to respond before she looks at her watch and runs to the entrance to flip the sign to CLOSED.

“Well, we, um,” he says, once Aunt Cass is in front of him and staring expectantly. Surprisingly – or not, she was the human personification of a puppy - enough, Honey Lemon takes pity on him and responds.

“We needed to get some parts for a project, so we’ll be going soon,” she says, wiping crumbs off her mouth. “These cookies are amazing, Ms. Hamada.”

Aunt Cass grins. “You think so? I spent the whole morning making those. Well, nearly; there was this _terribly_ rude couple demanding ten cakes….”

 

\---

 

Five customer horror stories and one and a half plate of cookies later, Tadashi stumbles out the door leading to the house. He looked a little worse for wear, but was holding Baymax’s case triumphantly.

Wasabi sighs. “Took you long enough.”

 

\---

“Baymax, pull up the case file for the man we met yesterday.”

“File corrupted or incomplete. Please refer to data manual for proper extraction.”

“Oh _bloody_ hell.”

“Gogo!”

Hiro narrows his eyes accusingly at Tadashi. “Did you even make a data manual?”

“Um.”

 

\---

 

The blinds on the window of Tadashi’s third floor office space were drawn tightly shut, with only the tiniest amounts of midday sunlight filtering in through the window. Everybody was crowded around the desk that was already struggling for space. Hiro’s elbows were winched between Wasabi and the side of the desk. Various chairs in varying states of disrepair provided seating arrangements, and loud rock music was blaring from the boombox Fred had magically produced out of thin air.

Hiro was perched on a chair made out of bright pink material, stuffing that was spilling out of the seams, and prayers. He eyed Tadashi’s fully backed leather desk chair longingly as Gogo let out yet another curse word. Tadashi clapped his hands over his ears, and Hiro was too discouraged to even bat it away.

“Tadashi, what the fuck were you thinking when you built this operating system?” she huffs, exiting out of another page without bothering to save.

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s not like I was planning to use it to _find a criminal_ or anything,” Tadashi pouts, all semblance of adulthood discarded an hour ago.

“Well,” Gogo sighs. “His blood type is B-, and he doesn’t have any STDs, that’s all. Have fun with trying to find him among the whole population of San Fransokyo.” She pushes her chair back, the plastic purple monstrosity making a horrible scraping noise across the floor.

Wasabi’s head jerks up, his eyes blinking open. His bright green hammock chair nearly sends him sprawling. “Is it my turn now?”

No one responds, all of them dejected- Hiro doubly so, considering it was _his_ microbots; still, he could always use the initial plan that Tadashi had stubbornly refused to let him try. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment of silence. “It’s your turn, Wasabi.”

“Sorry, Hiro,” Gogo says, genuinely apologetic as she slaps him on the back before burying her face in a freshly opened can of Red Bull. Fred looks about close to passing out, and he makes grabby hands for it, which are ignored. Honey Lemon just holds out a hand from her pile of textbooks, and Gogo hands the drink without any reluctance. Fred grumbles at the injustice.  
“I’m _bored_ ,” he mutters. “Hang on, let me change the song.”

The boombox switches over to a ridiculously poppy bubblegum song, and Hiro sighs.

 

\---

 

“I got it!” Honey Lemon shrieks excitedly. This sets off an immediate chain reaction- a bored Fred had been flipping through a worn, cared for copy of _The Terrible Dinosaur, Issue #23_ , which he drops on Tadashi’s head, which had been lying on the rug on the middle of the room, having ceded his chair to Hiro. Tadashi jolts in surprise, knocking Wasabi’s hammock chair, sending him crashing into Gogo, who had been poring over Honey Lemon’s test notes.

“You did what-“

“ _Oh my god-_ “

“Final-effing-ly-“

“Crap, _I’m studying here-_ “

“GUYS!” Hiro shouts, his voice cracking towards the end. He pointedly cleared his throat, rolling his head towards the screen. “Honey Lemon, how did you do it?”  
“Well, I, um,” Honey Lemon says sheepishly. “I might have stole someone’s deep recovering program? And changed it a little?”

Hiro grins in delight. “A little.”

Gogo snorts. “More like _a lot_. Like you always tend to do. Software thief.”

“There’s nearly everything… except his hormone levels, estimated age, bone health, and he _might_ have lung cancer-“

Hiro taps his chin thoughtfully. “Would we be able to find him in a city full of people, though?”

Tadashi shrugs, rubbing his head. “I’m sure you can think up something.”

“ _Right,_ ” Hiro sighs, for the fifth time that day, and gets to work.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had this sitting in my hard drive since Christmas  
> please don't shoot me, i'm a horrible updater //cries

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Immortals by Fall Out Boy.  
> Self-betaed, so I apologize for any mistakes.


End file.
